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Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
130 quotes
“The god looked out upon the troubled deep Waked into tumult from its placid sleep; The flame of anger kindles in his eye As the wild waves ascend the lowering sky; He lifts his head above their awful height And to the distant fleet directs his sight.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1824 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: First Verses", translation from the Æneid, Book I, written while at Phillips Academy, Andover, MA (1824 or 1825)
“Storms, thunders, waves! Howl, crash, and bellow till ye get your fill; Ye sometimes rest; men never can be still But in their graves.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Daily Trials by a Sensitive Man" (1830)
“The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom; And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Last Leaf", Poems (1836)
Also quoted by: Oliver Wendell Holmes
“I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer!”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Last Leaf", Poems (1836)
Also quoted by: Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Thou say’st an undisputed thing In such a solemn way.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To an Insect", Poems (1836)
Also quoted by: Oliver Wendell Holmes
“And silence, like a poultice, comes To heal the blows of sound.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To an Insect", Poems (1836)
“You think they are crusaders sent From some infernal clime, To pluck the eyes of sentiment And dock the tail of Rhyme, To crack the voice of Melody And break the legs of Time.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Music Grinders", Poems (1836)
Also quoted by: Oliver Wendell Holmes
“And since, I never dare to write As funny as I can.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Height of the Ridiculous", Poems (1836)
Also quoted by: Oliver Wendell Holmes
“When the last reader reads no more.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Last Reader", Poems (1836)
Also quoted by: Oliver Wendell Holmes
“The freeman casting with unpurchased hand The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Poetry, a Metrical Essay", Poems (1836)
Also quoted by: Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Thine eye was on the censer, And not the hand that bore it.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lines by a Clerk", Poems (1836)
Also quoted by: Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Where go the poet's lines? Answer, ye evening tapers! Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls, Speak from your folded papers!”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Poet's Lot", Poems (1836)
Also quoted by: Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Those kind friends who suggest to a person suffering from a tedious complaint, that he "Had better try Homoeopathy," are apt to enforce their suggestion by adding, that "at any rate it can do no harm." This may or may not be true as regards the individual. But it always does very great harm to the community to encourage ignorance, error, or deception in a profession which deals with the life and health of our fellow-creatures.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1842 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions (1842) p. iii
“So long as the body is affected through the mind, no audacious device, even of the most manifestly dishonest character, can fail of producing occasional good to those who yield it an implicit or even a partial faith. The argument founded on this occasional good would be as applicable in justifying the counterfeiter and giving circulation to his base coin, on the ground that a spurious dollar had often relieved a poor man's necessities.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1842 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions (1842) p. iv
“Faith loves to lean on time's destroying arm, And age, like distance, lends a double charm.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Urania: A Rhymed Lesson (1846), p. 11
“And when you stick on conversation’s burrs, Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Urania: A Rhymed Lesson (1846), p. 22
Also quoted by: Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Lean, hungry, savage anti-everythings.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Modest Request", Poems (1849)
“Then the white man hates him [the Native American], and hunts him down like the wild beasts of the forest, and so the red-crayon sketch is rubbed out, and the canvas is ready for a picture of manhood a little more like God's own image.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Pilgrims of Plymouth" (Oration, December 22, 1855), in Cephas Brainerd and Eveline Warner Brainerd (eds), The New England Society Orations, vol. 2 (New York: The Century Co., 1901) p. 298
“I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be better for mankind—and all the worse for the fishes.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1860 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Medical Society (30 May 1860), in Medical Communications of the Massachusetts Medical Society, vol. 9 (1860) pp. 337–8
“Call him not old whose visionary brain Holds o’er the post its undivided reign, For him in vain the envious seasons roll, Who bears eternal summer in this soul.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Old Player" (1861), Songs in Many Keys (1862)
“Dream on! Though Heaven may woo our open eyes, Through their closed lids we look on fairer skies; Truth is for other worlds, and hope for this; The cheating future lends the present's bliss; Life is a running shade, with fettered hands, That chases phantoms over shifting sands; Death a still spectre on a marble seat, With ever clutching palms and shackled feet; The airy shapes that mock life's slender chain, The flying joys he strives to clasp in vain, Death only grasps; to live is to pursue, — Dream on! there's nothing but illusion true!”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Old Player" (1861), Songs in Many Keys (1862)
“Wake in our breast the living fires, The holy faith that warmed our sires; Thy hand hath made our nation free; To die for her is serving Thee.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Army Hymn", Songs in Many Keys (1862)
“One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, One Nation evermore!”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Voyage of the Good Ship Union", in The Atlantic Monthly (March 1862) pp. 398-400
“Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold; But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: No Time like the old Time", in The Atlantic Monthly (October 1865) p. 398
“I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose. I know there are professors in this country who 'ligate' arteries. Other surgeons only tie them, and it stops the bleeding just as well.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1842 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Scholastic and Bedside Teaching", Introductory Lecture to the Medical Class of Harvard University (November 6, 1867); in Medical Essays, 1842-1882 (1891) p. 302
“God reigneth. All is well.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1874 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hymn at the Funeral Services of Charles Sumner" (March 16, 1874); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare Browning, Pippa Passes: "God's in his heaven— / All's right with the world.
“Good to the heels the well-worn slipper feels When the tired player shuffles off the buskin; A page of Hood may do a fellow good After a scolding from Carlyle or Ruskin.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1877 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: How Not To Settle It", in The Atlantic Monthly (February 1877) p. 251
Also quoted by: Oliver Wendell Holmes
“I have always considered my face a convenience rather than an ornament.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1882 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to James Russell Lowell (March 18, 1882)
“Speak not too well of one who scarce will know Himself transfigured in its roseate glow; Say kindly of him what is, chiefly, true, Remembering always he belongs to you; Deal with him as a truant, if you will, But claim him, keep him, call him brother still!”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1883 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Poem read at a dinner given for the author by the medical profession of the City of New York (April 12, 1883); reported in The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, ed. Eleanor M. Tilton (1895, rev. 1975), p. 71
“Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Mortal Antipathy (1885) ch. 20
“To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1889 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Seventieth Birthday of Julia Ward Howe" (May 27, 1889); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Also quoted by: Oliver Wendell Holmes
“The brightest blades grow dim with rust, The fairest meadow white with snow.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chanson without Music"; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“When lawyers take what they would give And doctors give what they would take.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called “facts.” They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When one has had all his conceit taken out of him, when he has lost all his illusions, his feathers will soon soak through, and he will fly no more.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I say that conceit is just as natural a thing to human minds as a centre is to a circle. But little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from a straight line. Even if it have the third vowel ['I', the first-person pronoun] as its centre, it does not soon betray it. The highest thought, that is, is the most seemingly impersonal; it does not obviously imply any individual centre.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even in common people, conceit has the virtue of making them cheerful; the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally unequalled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, though liable to be tedious at times.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some of the sharpest men in argument are notoriously unsound in judgment.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere, One thing is certain: Love will triumph here! Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule,— The world's great masters, when you're out of school,— Learn the brief moral of our evening's play Man has his will,—but woman has her way!”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest persons, has mingled with it a something which partakes of insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep company with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mark this which I am going to say once for all: If I had not force enough to project a principle full in the face of the half dozen most obvious facts which seem to contradict it, I would think only in single file from this day forward.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) first seen 1873 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Holmes' critique of "single file" thinking foreshadows Fyodor Dostoevsky's attack, in an essay of October 1876, on what he called "the straight-line approach". See Dostoevsky, A Writer's Diary, Vol. 1: 1873–1876 (Northw…
“How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made!”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I try his head occasionally as housewives try eggs,— give it an intellectual shake and hold it up to the light, so to speak, to see if it has life in it, actual or potential, or only contains lifeless albumen.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Josephus Daniels, ambassador to Mexico, sent this quotation to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 1, 1936, in a note of New Year greetings, with this comment: "Here is an expression from Holmes which, if it has mi…